Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery

When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Sleeping Train Drivers

The train driver nodded off, in guns-more-or-less-outlawed Bronx borough, NYFC, and the train crashed violently, with four killed and “dozens” injured.

So the sleepy — or stoned? — driver went to jail, right? Oh, no. He lawyered up, with the help of his Bad Train Drivers’ Union, and the railroad and the city and state rolled over and played dead.

Incompetent, reckless train driver William Rockefeller not only isn’t receiving the consequences he deserves, the greedy killer is double-dipping with two pensions, one for PTSD, because the crumb twaumatized himself by crashing his train and killing a fistful of innocents.

The Journal News reported Friday that William Rockefeller will receive $3,200 a month for life from Metro-North Railroad.

Rockefeller was at the controls of a Metro-North train that derailed in the Bronx in December 2013, killing four passengers and injuring dozens.

Prosecutors said Rockefeller fell asleep at the controls but declined to prosecute him.

The Journal News said officials cited medical privacy issues in refusing to discuss Rockefeller’s disability. In September, Rockefeller’s union said he was seeking the disability for a post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the accident on Dec. 1, 2013.

The Metro-North pension is in addition to Rockefeller’s federal railroad retirement pension. The amount of that pension has not been disclosed.

Two pensions. And that’s still not enough for the avaricious, grasping, moral zero and his gang of soulless lawyers: they’re suing the railroad for its negligence.

Rockefeller has filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against Metro-North. He claims the commuter railroad was to blame for the accident.

$10 million? Why not. When you’re a public servant, the whole public is your servant. And negligence? Yeah. They let him drive a train, and look what happened!

Between the two pensions, the guy will likely be drawing an upper-middle-class income, guaranteed by the chumpstaxpayers, for as long as his greedy, grasping fingers can cling to his miserable life. Even if he doesn’t suck $10 Mil out of those commuters who have, so far, survived his attempts to bump them off.

Of course, the world is probably better off paying Rockefeller not to work. At least this way he can’t kill any more of his passengers.

I am a commercial driver. I train and manage drivers under DOT and PHMSA regulation.

A safety sensitive employee (DRIVER!!!) is required to submit to a drug/alcohol test ASAP after any accident resulting in injury, death or loss of property over a rather low dollar value.

Failure or refusal to timely submit to a physically possible drug and alcohol testing is construed as admission of guilt. TONS of precedent- Thank you, Reagan adminsistration based drug war- all commercial drivers are pretty much guilty until proven innocent. No more “give me weed, whites and wine and show me a sign”.

So who said that merely “lawyering up” had any bearing on the legal outcome of this event as related to workplace intoxication of that engineer?

(Quote)
Rockefeller surrendered his cell phone and submitted samples for drug and alcohol tests. When it was reported that his attention had lapsed prior to the accident, investigators announced that they would be assembling a timeline of his 72 hours preceding the accident to see whether they could find any explanation.
(end quote)

No alcohol or illegal drugs found, only traces of chlorpheniramine from OTC cold/flu medications, not atributed as a cause of the incident. He was not using his cell phone at the time or texting while driving, etc.

However- Employer forced him to flip his schedule right before the event, which I can tell you from personal experience FUCKS YOU UP for a few days to a few weeks. And apparently, he was a middle aged and overweight individual, with undiagnosed/untreated sleep apnea.

So now, we all get checked for sleep apnea, same as diabetes or any other health issue that could cause a driver to lose focus (let alone consciousness). The safety regulations are written in BLOOD. DOT or NFPA, the books are as thick as they are because there are SO many things that have got people killed.

Bert is right re: drug testing it is standard procedure….as well as random in our industry….and his pension is paid from RailRoad Retirement …a totally seperate entity from SS and totally funded by RR workers themselves…..NOT taxpayers….AND it is currently solvent till 2025…!

Nor do I …. The ‘spirit’ of the agreements involved is that railroading is now, and has always been a dangerous job maybe not so much for the engineer (and maybe much more so in the past) but for the conductors…. the guys on the ground…. particularly in freight service that frequently sustain career ending injuries….the frail human body doesn’t typically fare well in altercations with equipment weighing tens to hundreds of tons.
And it’s just a damn dangerous environment. Lots of slip, trip an fall scenarios….(EVERYTHING is hard edged metal concrete or ballast) it’s just the way it is…..consequently we are paid well for the hazards as well as the shitty hours….it is what it is….not for everyone….but…when ones career is ended due to injury the high salary adds up quickly ….

But the fact that he’s not required to be strapped to the forward side of a train eight hours a day, five days a week, during his stress retirement to qualify for the pension is an absolute outrage.

The fact that the benefit is “as long as he lives” also opens up any number of other possibilities for taxpayer justice.
Like some one of the victims’ families paying some guy with a smashed over nose to see that Sleepy has a bout of narcolepsy just in front of an oncoming subway train.
As a bonus, it’s a 100% certain cure for his lifetime of PTSD.

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